


Nothing Gold Can Stay

by lokiisms



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Bondage, But funny, Drug Use, Jealousy, Knifeplay, Marvel Universe, Multi, Slow Burn, Sugar Daddy, Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Violence, frostmaster, i'm going to make this painful, kinda??, loki is a sugar baby, not even really an au, there is some bondage, this does get sexy, well technically, wow just like ragnarok!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:25:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14891969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokiisms/pseuds/lokiisms
Summary: four times loki found himself in the grandmaster's favor and one time he didn't. a sugar daddy frostmaster au. (but can we really say it's an au.....)





	1. PREFACE

**Author's Note:**

> firstly, this fic wouldn't be possible without the help of a very good friend of mine allowing me to vent all of my loki frustration to them and consequentially airing my need to write this fic. secondly, i'm going to make this as angsty/funny/sad as i can. you're welcome.

At the risk of sounding cliché, it wasn’t meant to end like this.

He tried to look for the silver lining. No one was dead, no one but Hela, which admittedly was for the better. Still, Loki felt an absence that stung worse than any mortal loss. He had failed in every single possible way. He supposed this all began to fall apart the second he let himself realize he was in love, and with someone so deliciously unattainable that he couldn’t help himself from plunging further into the mess he’d made. He could almost laugh at himself now; Loki, the god of mischief, succumbing to the very oldest trick in the book. A taste of his own medicine. He supposed he deserved it, in a twisted kind of way – it wasn’t like fate had dealt him a bad enough hand as it was. 

But somehow, it didn’t feel like a trick anymore. He bit his lip and pushed his dark hair behind his ear, a single tear welling in his hazel eyes. He thanked the stars that no one was around him at that moment, not Thor or Valkyrie or even Korg; Loki didn’t cry, or at least not around those that could see the tears roll down his cheeks. He wondered what all the mortal women on Earth felt when Loki was finished with them and if it was anything close to how he felt now. It was almost enough to make him vow never to do it again.

That’s really all he ever wanted, wasn’t it? To be loved; to be accepted. His need to be needed burned in his chest, an ache that never settled, that kept him up at night and nagged at his conscious in the day. He sighed and stood from where he had sunk into his chair, peering out the window of the ship his brother had commandeered while everyone else celebrated the saving of their people. How very much like Loki to pout in the corner amidst the cheering of a crowd. He hated feeling sorry for himself, but could you blame him? A poor little lost boy. That’s how he had begun, and that’s all he felt he would ever be. There wasn’t a point in even trying to be something else. As soon as he felt he’d made a home for himself, it came crashing at his feet, and he was forced to start over again. No matter how high he would climb in his efforts to mean something, nothing lasted. Nothing gold can stay.

Another empire, fallen at his feet. In both the physical and metaphysical sense, Loki had reduced everything he worked for into ashes and ruins. It was going to take a while before he could forgive himself for this one.

He had become a broken prince on a desecrated throne, just like before; just like in Asgard.


	2. Chapter 2

The Bifrost had always been rather finicky, but it had never spat Loki out in a place like this. It was probably due to the fact that he had been somewhat unceremoniously thrown out of it by Hela, sister from the ninth circle. Regardless, this was the second time that day he had landed face-first on some quite hard ground, his thin body bouncing on impact. He groaned, still lying prostrate in the dirt, wishing he were anywhere but here. He stayed still for a moment longer, gathering himself as much as he could but wanting to milk the drama of it all: facedown in the dirt of a foreign land, no knowledge of the whereabouts of his brother or even if he was alive, all the little details adding up into this one bite of time.

Finally, Loki rolled himself over, hazel eyes to the sky, a little bit of blood on his cheek from a particularly sharp rock scraping him as he landed ungracefully. He shifted his eyes, left and right, up and down, seeing nothing but quaint farmland and a smattering of little houses made of stone and clay. Smoke plumed from a handful of chimneys, and strangely, none of the little agrarian citizens seemed terribly bothered by his entrance. This annoyed him only slightly. Sitting up, the headrush was enough to make him want to lie back down, but he figured his clothes were already getting a little dirty from having laid there for however long he had deemed necessary. Luckily, he didn’t need any of his strength to stand, because the second his head stopped spinning, someone had yanked him up by the collar into a standing position – or at least as much as she could have, given the fact that Loki towered over the stranger.

“Greetings,” he said sarcastically, pushing his long fingers through his hair and brushing the dirt out of it. His vision settled over the visitor, revealing her to be a very pretty girl, the type Loki would have loved to play a few games with if the circumstances weren’t as they were in the present moment. The girl’s eyes seemed to dust over Loki at the same time as his over her, and suddenly Loki was very interested in whoever she might be. Something about her looked oddly familiar, in the way that looking at a piece of art looked familiar to every other piece of art within the same medium. The stranger quirked the corner of her mouth in a sort of scowl, releasing a sigh that accompanied settling for a less-than-prime option.

“Skinny. Greasy. But you’ll do. I have a quota to meet.” Scrapper 142, as she was known to everyone that mattered (read: not Loki), was growing terribly weary of searching Sakaar and the surrounding planets for the Grandmaster’s torture porn fodder. All this strange man was to her was a chance at getting paid a little extra – if he wasn’t suited to challenge the Champion, he would be an excellent waste of time for her overlord, and both of those things put money in her hands. It made no difference in her eyes.

Loki looked at her for a minute longer, registering what she was implying, and within the second he held a knife in each hand. “I wouldn’t try anything if I were you.” His voice dripped honey-smooth and arrogant from his lips, the delicious promise of a challenge hanging in the air above him. He didn’t like not having the advantage of home field, and his eyes flickered over the terrain as he looked for an opening for attack. Oddly enough, upon further inspection it was revealed to Loki that the ground around them was almost entirely garbage, crushed plastics and aluminum and compost; Loki wrinkled his nose in disgust. Curiously, they still hadn’t caught the attention of the farmers, but that was semantics, and Loki decided he would ponder this after the fact. 

“Oh, shut up. Do men really think I’m afraid of them?”

A few cocky strut-steps towards the girl as she spoke was all it took. Immediately, her palm pushed out and connected with Loki’s nose, blood beginning to gush out of it, tears stinging his eyes at the sudden pain. The quietest crunch promised him that it was indeed broken, and that his opponent was much stronger than he thought. Instinct told him to press his hands against his nose, dropping his weapon, and he was disarmed just as suddenly as he had armed himself. The girl took full advantage of the fact, pouncing on Loki’s bloodied and rather inconvenienced form, straddling his waist in a way he probably would have been into if she hadn’t just stuck something into his neck that bit at his skin like a dozen tiny little needles. He winced, both from the pain in his nose and the pain in his neck – and the pain in the ass that this stranger was quickly becoming.

Thankfully, the nose healed quickly, pain subsiding in a moment or two. He was instead left with a weight pinning him down, her slender fingers trapping his wrists on the ground above his head.  
“Is this how you greet everyone who comes to visit?” Loki smirked, and in response she rolled her eyes, clearly not having it with him. Good thing Loki never learned how to read emotions, or at least to take any stock in them. “One would think someone could have taught you some kind of etiquette.”

“Do you ever, you know, stop talking?” she bit back. She seemed to have realized that Loki had managed to heal himself, because she was too smart to move her hands away from his wrists. Tall and lanky and uncoordinated as he was, Loki knew how to gain the upper hand in any situation, and he wouldn’t hesitate to do so the second he found a way to force her to relinquish control.

“Only when you make me,” he replied coyly, flexing his fingers as she adjusted her grip. “So, are we at a stalemate here, or do you have any other tricks up your sleeve?” 142 was at a loss for once in her life as a Scrapper. Her next premeditated move depended entirely upon Loki rolling over and pinning her down, and so improvisation was commanded. She was never terribly good at not killing her targets in situations like this, and killing him would mean not getting paid, which wasn’t something she was terribly fond of considering. So she did what any rational human would do, and she fought dirty.

Her knee found its way easily enough between his legs, at a fast enough and hard enough pace to render him speechless for the half second it took for her to take the tiny shock remote from her pocket and switch it on, hoping the chip she had shoved into his neck would work — she had run into a couple defective batches in the past few days, which made for some disappointing moments. Fortunately, Loki convulsed almost comically, hands cupping the delicate area 142 had targeted, and with a flip of her hair, 142 knew she had won.

As he writhed on the ground, Loki’s confidence was more or less decimated. He hadn’t expected her to beat him so easily; he thought he had known every move she could have made, but evidently he had missed one crucial coupe-de-grace. Embarrassed at how easily she had rendered him useless, Loki held up his hands in surrender, grateful for the gulps of air he could take in after 142 switched off the electrical shock coursing through his body.

“Unfair,” he gasped, rolling over onto his side. 142 laughed.

“That’s the game, sweetheart,” she taunted him, full lips curling into a devilish smile. With one fluid motion, she had pulled him from the ground once again, pinning his arms behind his back in the next. Loki let out a soft, amused sort of monosyllabic laugh.

“You’re not inexperienced in combat, are you?” he teased, craning his neck to look back at her. She pushed him in response.

“Be quiet and get into the ship,” she commanded. “Unless you want to be knocked out cold.”

“Which part will get me knocked out? Not being quiet or not getting into the ship? I’d like to know what my options are, darling,” he replied, turning to face the land ahead of them, where what he perceived to be 142’s ship sat undisturbed and gargantuan amidst the rather modest scenery around them. 142 gave a little noise of disgust and pushed him forward, commanding him to walk. 

“The Grandmaster’s going to have lots of fun with you,” she mumbled under her breath, at a volume that she didn’t expect Loki to hear. But of course, he did, and was instantly filled with a slew of mischievous ideas. She was taking him to someone who, with the title of Grandmaster, surely had some form of control over this planet. All he had to do was weasel his way into the good graces of this Grandmaster, and he was set. Then he would have all the power he needed to do whatever he so desired -- be it leaving this planet, or staying to gain control. The latter plan would take a little more than sweet-talking, but it wasn’t something he was against attempting. All part of a day’s work. He should be thanking this hot-headed stranger, really, for taking him quite literally to the top. 

“Who is the Grandmaster?” Loki asked, catching 142 off guard as she shoved him up the ramp leading into the body of the ship, which smelled overwhelmingly of alcohol and something a little sweeter -- chocolate, maybe. She cleared her throat and produced a pair of something like handcuffs from a back pocket, clasping Loki’s hands together before she released him. 

“My boss,” she answered shortly, pushing him into the shiny, metallic interior of the vessel. “And the ruler of Sakaar. But you’ll hear all about that when we get to the palace.” With another shove, she goaded him into an overstuffed orange chair. 

“Can we stop with the pushing?” asked a very annoyed Loki, unaccustomed to being manhandled without asking for it first. 142 ignored his question and instead opted to pull a large glass bottle of what must have been alcohol from the shelf on the other side of the ship. In a few short seconds, the bottle was polished off, and Loki eyed her curiously.

“Please tell me you’re not going to be the one driving this ship,” he deadpanned, and in response, the bottle hurled past his face, shattering against the wall behind him. He quirked an eyebrow, feeling a little threatened by this girl, and crossed his long legs at the knee. “I take it you’re defensive about your drinking problem.” 

“Oh my god, seriously, did anyone ever teach you how to stop talking?” 142 walked over to the command center, pressing a very particular sequence of buttons before taking her seat at the wheel, not at all feeling up to having Mr. Never-Shuts-Up in the back. Maybe she would end up having to knock him out after all.

“Being the son of Odin, it’s a given that words would come naturally,” he retorted, that cocky, scheming smile, which never seemed to fade unless something truly heinous had happened either to himself or his plans, unfurling over his lips. 

“Son of Odin? You’re far from home, your majesty.” She spoke sarcastically, but he truly was about as far from Asgard as one could get. She wondered how he made it to Sakaar in the first place; the Bifrost shouldn’t have taken him so far from his home planet. But then again, being who she was, she wasn’t entirely sure how she wound up in Sakaar either. It was best not to press into matters such as this. It only made for more pain than she could handle. At least in Sakaar, she knew how to be important. 

“You know him, then?” Loki teased, not at all surprised that his father’s name would travel this far from the Nine Realms. “I imagine you two would get along splendidly. You’ve even got the kind of looks he was fond of.” 

142 was begging whatever god may be listening that Loki would shut up. He was getting a little too close to home, inching ever further to the places she didn’t want to go. 

“Or maybe you’d get along better with my brother. He’s always liked the girls who can keep up with his alcohol consumption. You drink like an Asga--” 

She’d had enough. She swerved the ship just enough so Loki’s stupid greasy head bounced against the window, hitting it hard enough to knock him out. She reveled in the silence for a moment, drinking it in, but something hadn’t settled right in the pit of her stomach. Something about Loki told her that her secret wasn’t safe, that her persona was paper-thin around him. It wasn’t like she wanted to hide the fact that she was an Asgardian, because she wasn’t one anymore, and all that bound her to the Valkyrie name was the useless tattoo adorning her arm. She still didn’t want Loki, the very prince she had been sworn to protect, finding out.

The remainder of the flight was taken in silence, partially very welcome but partially unsettling. It felt like 142 could finally breathe when she arrived at the palace; a weight lifted from her chest. She could sink back into her role as a Scrapper without so much as a word, and everything was back to the way she wanted it. 

After parking the ship among the fleet of others, all with various purposes, 142 dragged the incapacitated god of mischief out of the chair and slung him over her shoulder. 

“For someone built like a matchstick you weigh an awful lot,” she groaned, passing through the doors to the main palace floor. All the pomp and circumstance that was reserved for contenders didn’t seem necessary for Loki; there was no way in hell the Grandmaster was going to let someone so perfectly his type go against his beloved champion. The front door would do for this one. 

Upon discovering that the main room was nearly empty, 142 rolled her eyes and unceremoniously dumped Loki in one of the chairs nearby. He had begun to stir on their walk into the palace, and was slowly beginning to regain consciousness as she restrained his wrists to the magnetic cuffs attached to the chair. 

“Again? Is this really necessary?” he groaned, his voice groggy as he settled back into the chair. Might as well get comfortable. 142 smiled with all the venom she could muster, only changing her expression when she heard two sets of footsteps approaching.

“There she is, my favorite, the best Scrapper Sakaar has, uh, ever known, right here. Don’t -- don’t you think so, Topaz? 142’s always been terribly good to us, hasn’t she? I should give her a raise or -- or something, shouldn’t I?” 142 shot Loki a look, one that said something like “You’re in for something good” or maybe just “Do you see what I deal with every day of my miserable life”. Loki couldn’t tell. Frankly, his brain was still hazy from the window incident. 

“What have you, uh, brought me this time, 142? Something good? Someone good? A contender maybe?” His lanky frame craned around to see Loki restrained to the chair, and immediately, there was a shift in energy, like the Grandmaster recognized Loki from somewhere. “Ohhoho, a pretty one,” he chuckled, walking closer to Loki. “You’re certainly a, um, a nice tall glass of -- of water, aren’t you? Not many creatures like you wind up on Sakaar.” The man -- who Loki had pieced together now as the same that 142 had mentioned before -- shot him a wink, and dragged his eyes up and down Loki’s lanky frame. 

With a click of his tongue and a second’s worth of further inspection, the Grandmaster had reached a verdict. “I, uh, I couldn’t just hand over someone like you to my champion, now could I? Someone like you deserves, deserves just the best kind of treatment. I can tell you’re not just somebody. I mean, everybody’s somebody, here on Sakaar, but you’re, you’re really -- quite something. Topaz, be a dear and un...un-restrain this gentleman and show him to, uh, my room.”

Loki hadn’t even had time to register what just happened before he was being escorted off again, the coy expression of the Grandmaster watching him fondly, even giving a little flirtatious wave as the one called Topaz and someone else guided him off in the opposite direction. The girl who had brought him and the strange older man were left talking in what Loki could only call the foyer, undoubtedly about him. Confused, but also slightly smug, Loki allowed the very muscular woman to guide him away to the Grandmaster’s bedroom. 

A long, winding hallway, far away from any other room or door, led them to their destination, and brusquely, Loki was once again pushed -- this time into a doorway, onto a very exquisitely plush bed, much more pleasant than anything 142 had pushed him into. He looked around at the decadent decor, curious but pleased that his plan was already going so pleasantly without even trying. It would be easier than ever to do away with this Grandmaster and take on his visage, securing Sakaar for himself and finally having a people to rule over, unlike anything he would have ever taken in Asgard. 

“Wait here,” Topaz instructed, shutting the door behind her with a soft, cushioned sound. 

Waiting. The very thing that had driven Loki insane for all these years, was now the only thing that stood between him and the future he had always dreamed of.


End file.
